Funny Stuff
Two stories from my college years:
I. "Too loud! Too loud!"
After high school I attended Los Angeles City College. I followed that with a year at UCLA, which didn’t turn out nearly as well. For one thing, the music department was almost entirely oriented toward musicology; the very existence of jazz was officially frowned upon. Eventually jazz found it’s way into the curriculum but was relegated to the Ethnomusicology Dept. That’s wrong on many levels and is probably more than just a little racist.
The orchestra was a skeleton crew that was fleshed out for the infrequent concerts. The conductor was Lukas Foss, a real sweetheart and a terrific musician. Lukas was one of the few bright spots in the UCLA experience; his assistant, Richard Dufallo, was another. (Then there was Roger Wagner, but that’s another story.) There was a concert band conducted by a clown named Clarence Sawhill, who, someone once said, couldn’t conduct electricity if he was standing in the Pacific Ocean. He once tried to conduct a piece in 5/4 and beat the conventional 4/4 pattern with his right hand followed by a wave of his left hand for the fifth beat.
“Well, there’s all kinds of music,” was Sawhill’s appraisal after Lukas Foss’s “Time Cycle” was played by the LA Philharmonic and he apparently had no choice but to attend.
Sawhill was a mean guy who, among other things, made it mandatory to play in the band in order to play in the orchestra. (Where I come from, that’s called blackmail.) And so I wound up playing E-flat clarinet on an instrument that belonged to the school and from which I could barely get a sound. It was a bad instrument to begin with and had not been maintained. I didn’t want to sink any money into getting it repaired (if that were even possible); I asked a well-known clarinetist I knew to try it for me and he agreed that it was unplayable. Trying to play it caused me to bite through my lower lip and the entire experience was painful in a lot of ways. So I hit on a plan: I would sideline the ensemble parts (hold the instrument in position, but not actually play) and only play the parts that were independent of other clarinets. I got away with it at rehearsals and finally it was time for the concert. The plan was still working, but during one of the pretend sections, Sawhill pointed at me and mouthed words that looked like, “Too loud. Too loud.”
I hadn’t made a sound. I lowered the clarinet and pointed to myself and shrugged. “Me?”
“Yes you,” was the answer. “TOO LOUD!”
It gets worse…
II. Louder! Louder!
Toward the end of the year it was pretty obvious that I should be someplace else and as luck would have it I got a call from Manuel Compinsky, a legendary chamber musician and teacher, asking me to audition for a scholarship to Mt. St. Mary’s College, a few miles from UCLA in Brentwood. My flute teacher, George Drexler (principal in the LA Phil.), had recommended me, apparently more impressed by my capacity for work than any talent. I was a pretty raw beginner.
I got to the audition to find Mr. Compinsky, Sister Maura Jean (the outgoing chair of the music department) and a huge guy with a nice smile, Pattee Evanson--Dr. Evanson, although the doctoral degree hadn’t yet been completed. (Sister Maura Jean had been a student of Arnold Schoenberg and a classmate of Leonard Stein at UCLA. She taught electronic music among other subjects.) Evanson took command and had me play a few orchestral excerpts. It wasn’t going too well when Compinsky stepped in. He asked me to play a low C “as softly as possible.” That’s pretty much the only way a beginner can play a low C. I did it and he said, “fantastic control.” I never found out if that was some sort of put-on. Evanson said, “young man, we want to invest in you” and I was offered a scholarship.
Evanson’s nice smile didn’t last. The guy was a lunatic who at one time or another had tried to get various other faculty members fired. The administration ignored him. He complained repeatedly about “an undercurrent of deceit” in the music department; there was, but it was entirely attributable to him. Evanson was eventually fired, as he had been from teaching gigs at Montana St. University, Eastman, and San Diego State. He was probably the worst teacher I have ever had and about as pompous as anyone I’ve ever met. One of those “never use one word when ten will do” kind of guys. “Upon whom the shoe fits, let it be worn,” he would say after one of his diatribes.
There were a lot of Evanson stories; this is my favorite:
He programmed a concert that included Bizet’s Patrie Overture and Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije, which has solos for tenor saxophone. John Gates, one of the school’s three excellent clarinet players (the others were Ella Good and Don Ransom), would play the tenor sax solos. John had begun his career as a tenor player; he and the other two alternated in the first clarinet chair.
The rehearsal began with the overture and John playing first clarinet. Next up was Kije. Rather than changing seats, John played the tenor solos sitting next to the first bassoon player and Don played first clarinet sitting where the 2nd player would sit.
I referred to Don as excellent but “astonishing” might be a better word, and when it came time for the clarinet solo, his fantastic sound filled the room. Hair stood on end, extraneous noise ceased. Evanson, who had apparently forgot to listen, looked back, saw John Gates sitting in the first clarinet chair holding a tenor saxophone, and bellowed, “WHERE’S MY CLARINET SOLO?” almost before the last of Don’s beautiful notes had floated into space. John and Don put their heads together and a plot was hatched.
The following week there were no classes scheduled but Evanson called a rehearsal anyway. We arrived only to find that a school service organization was holding a party for little kids in the rehearsal room--lots of kids in costumes. Evanson arrived just at the downbeat, sized up the situation, and decreed that the rehearsal would be moved to a nearby building. It took about half an hour to get situated and then the real trouble started.
We began with the overture but the first horn player had called in with car trouble and Evanson’s wife, Flavus, had gone to fetch him. No one would move up to the first horn chair, so where there should have been oom-pas there were only pas. A retired violist, the father of a drummer friend of mine, played in the orchestra and in the new space was sitting farther than usual from the conductor. He had his part memorized and had his eyes glued to Evanson and when Evenson noticed, he ground to a halt and asked, “What are you looking at?”
“Trying to find your beat,” the violist answered.
Someone accidentally hit a music stand and an entire row of them tumbled like dominos.
Then it was time for Kije. When the clarinet solo began, John Gates was again sitting in the first clarinet chair but this time he was holding a clarinet up to his lips but not playing. Don Ransom sat, out of sight, on the floor next to him and played the solo. When Evanson looked back at them, John slowly took the clarinet out of his mouth but the sound kept coming. I wish I could describe the look on Evanson’s face but I’ve never seen anything like it and wouldn’t know where to start. The next day it was announced that he was going on half-sabbatical. He never returned to teaching. There is more (and just as bad) to the Evanson story, but for another time.
I. "Too loud! Too loud!"
After high school I attended Los Angeles City College. I followed that with a year at UCLA, which didn’t turn out nearly as well. For one thing, the music department was almost entirely oriented toward musicology; the very existence of jazz was officially frowned upon. Eventually jazz found it’s way into the curriculum but was relegated to the Ethnomusicology Dept. That’s wrong on many levels and is probably more than just a little racist.
The orchestra was a skeleton crew that was fleshed out for the infrequent concerts. The conductor was Lukas Foss, a real sweetheart and a terrific musician. Lukas was one of the few bright spots in the UCLA experience; his assistant, Richard Dufallo, was another. (Then there was Roger Wagner, but that’s another story.) There was a concert band conducted by a clown named Clarence Sawhill, who, someone once said, couldn’t conduct electricity if he was standing in the Pacific Ocean. He once tried to conduct a piece in 5/4 and beat the conventional 4/4 pattern with his right hand followed by a wave of his left hand for the fifth beat.
“Well, there’s all kinds of music,” was Sawhill’s appraisal after Lukas Foss’s “Time Cycle” was played by the LA Philharmonic and he apparently had no choice but to attend.
Sawhill was a mean guy who, among other things, made it mandatory to play in the band in order to play in the orchestra. (Where I come from, that’s called blackmail.) And so I wound up playing E-flat clarinet on an instrument that belonged to the school and from which I could barely get a sound. It was a bad instrument to begin with and had not been maintained. I didn’t want to sink any money into getting it repaired (if that were even possible); I asked a well-known clarinetist I knew to try it for me and he agreed that it was unplayable. Trying to play it caused me to bite through my lower lip and the entire experience was painful in a lot of ways. So I hit on a plan: I would sideline the ensemble parts (hold the instrument in position, but not actually play) and only play the parts that were independent of other clarinets. I got away with it at rehearsals and finally it was time for the concert. The plan was still working, but during one of the pretend sections, Sawhill pointed at me and mouthed words that looked like, “Too loud. Too loud.”
I hadn’t made a sound. I lowered the clarinet and pointed to myself and shrugged. “Me?”
“Yes you,” was the answer. “TOO LOUD!”
It gets worse…
II. Louder! Louder!
Toward the end of the year it was pretty obvious that I should be someplace else and as luck would have it I got a call from Manuel Compinsky, a legendary chamber musician and teacher, asking me to audition for a scholarship to Mt. St. Mary’s College, a few miles from UCLA in Brentwood. My flute teacher, George Drexler (principal in the LA Phil.), had recommended me, apparently more impressed by my capacity for work than any talent. I was a pretty raw beginner.
I got to the audition to find Mr. Compinsky, Sister Maura Jean (the outgoing chair of the music department) and a huge guy with a nice smile, Pattee Evanson--Dr. Evanson, although the doctoral degree hadn’t yet been completed. (Sister Maura Jean had been a student of Arnold Schoenberg and a classmate of Leonard Stein at UCLA. She taught electronic music among other subjects.) Evanson took command and had me play a few orchestral excerpts. It wasn’t going too well when Compinsky stepped in. He asked me to play a low C “as softly as possible.” That’s pretty much the only way a beginner can play a low C. I did it and he said, “fantastic control.” I never found out if that was some sort of put-on. Evanson said, “young man, we want to invest in you” and I was offered a scholarship.
Evanson’s nice smile didn’t last. The guy was a lunatic who at one time or another had tried to get various other faculty members fired. The administration ignored him. He complained repeatedly about “an undercurrent of deceit” in the music department; there was, but it was entirely attributable to him. Evanson was eventually fired, as he had been from teaching gigs at Montana St. University, Eastman, and San Diego State. He was probably the worst teacher I have ever had and about as pompous as anyone I’ve ever met. One of those “never use one word when ten will do” kind of guys. “Upon whom the shoe fits, let it be worn,” he would say after one of his diatribes.
There were a lot of Evanson stories; this is my favorite:
He programmed a concert that included Bizet’s Patrie Overture and Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije, which has solos for tenor saxophone. John Gates, one of the school’s three excellent clarinet players (the others were Ella Good and Don Ransom), would play the tenor sax solos. John had begun his career as a tenor player; he and the other two alternated in the first clarinet chair.
The rehearsal began with the overture and John playing first clarinet. Next up was Kije. Rather than changing seats, John played the tenor solos sitting next to the first bassoon player and Don played first clarinet sitting where the 2nd player would sit.
I referred to Don as excellent but “astonishing” might be a better word, and when it came time for the clarinet solo, his fantastic sound filled the room. Hair stood on end, extraneous noise ceased. Evanson, who had apparently forgot to listen, looked back, saw John Gates sitting in the first clarinet chair holding a tenor saxophone, and bellowed, “WHERE’S MY CLARINET SOLO?” almost before the last of Don’s beautiful notes had floated into space. John and Don put their heads together and a plot was hatched.
The following week there were no classes scheduled but Evanson called a rehearsal anyway. We arrived only to find that a school service organization was holding a party for little kids in the rehearsal room--lots of kids in costumes. Evanson arrived just at the downbeat, sized up the situation, and decreed that the rehearsal would be moved to a nearby building. It took about half an hour to get situated and then the real trouble started.
We began with the overture but the first horn player had called in with car trouble and Evanson’s wife, Flavus, had gone to fetch him. No one would move up to the first horn chair, so where there should have been oom-pas there were only pas. A retired violist, the father of a drummer friend of mine, played in the orchestra and in the new space was sitting farther than usual from the conductor. He had his part memorized and had his eyes glued to Evanson and when Evenson noticed, he ground to a halt and asked, “What are you looking at?”
“Trying to find your beat,” the violist answered.
Someone accidentally hit a music stand and an entire row of them tumbled like dominos.
Then it was time for Kije. When the clarinet solo began, John Gates was again sitting in the first clarinet chair but this time he was holding a clarinet up to his lips but not playing. Don Ransom sat, out of sight, on the floor next to him and played the solo. When Evanson looked back at them, John slowly took the clarinet out of his mouth but the sound kept coming. I wish I could describe the look on Evanson’s face but I’ve never seen anything like it and wouldn’t know where to start. The next day it was announced that he was going on half-sabbatical. He never returned to teaching. There is more (and just as bad) to the Evanson story, but for another time.